If a person takes an antibiotic for strep throat, how might E coli be affected? How might that affect the host

Question

Help needed for my Bio lab.
Please and Thank you
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Answer 1

I think what your Bio lab is probably trying to teach you is about antibiotic resistance. Though taking an antibiotic does not DIRECTLY CAUSE bacteria to become resistant, it does SELECT for those bacteria that are resistant - i.e. the resistant strains will live and the others will die, leaving the resistant ones to grow.

Also, consider the normal balance of bacteria in your gut. It's not a sterile environment - there are many bacteria that make their homes there. Often if you take antibiotics you can disrupt this balance and one of them will overgrow. This can lead to disease (specifically, C. diff colitis). Same thing happens in yeast infections - antibiotics can kill the normal bacteria that keep yeast growth in check and the yeast can overgrow.

Hope that helps.

Answer 2

if you take a broad spectrum antibiotic which works for both gram positive bacteria (Strep. pyogenes) and gram negative bacteria (E. coli), you would clear the strep infection, but also reduce the normal flora (E. coli) in your gut, which could possibly result in diarrhea. If it worked well enough, most of your other normal flora would die off, also resulting in a yeast infection. Yeast is an opportunistic infection in this case.

Answer 3

Most Antibiotics used currently are known as Broad spectrum. This simply means that they can act against a lot of different strains of Bacteria.
If the Antibiotic is Narrow spectrum or single spectrum, then it wont have an effect.